


To whom it may concern

by Liviapenn



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Canon Death, Chromatic Character, Gen, Ghosts, Identity Crisis (series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-11
Updated: 2005-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liviapenn/pseuds/Liviapenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To whom it may concern

**Author's Note:**

> The timeframe of this story is sometime shortly after War Games and Identity Crisis, with specific reference to Batgirl #58. Thanks to Sarah T. and Te. Song quotes from The Weakerthans, 'Letter of resignation' and 'A new name for everything.'

_All rolled up and unfurled like a flag._  
Wake up and pack your bag.  
To whom it may concern...

*

The darkness fades. He sees the faint light of sunset, and then it brightens oddly. Everything's in reverse. The wind is blowing, but it doesn't seem to meet resistance against his skin, and he doesn't feel cold, either. There's a woman standing before him, golden in the sunset, her cloak billowing and her blonde hair flying. For a moment he thinks it's the visitation that came to him in his darkest hour and asked him to choose life or death. But then she leans forward and hops down onto the ground, into the shadow in front of the carved stone.

"Stephanie?"

She lifts gloved hands to push her hood back. "Hi, Mr. Drake."

It's his son's girlfriend and she's wearing a costume and she's dead.

Correction, he thinks. She's dead, *too*.

"When did you..."

"A while back. I don't really know." Stephanie shrugs. "Time gets confused on this side."

"Tim didn't tell me."

"You didn't want to know." Stephanie sits on Jack's gravestone, kicking gently at a display of flowers. The sun descends slowly beyond the hill, turning the pale statuary into darkly lurking silhouettes. "I know. I even understand. You had a lot going on and not much time."

There's no pity in her eyes, just an unsettling anger. It doesn't seem to be directed at him. He turns away, looking down at the city, its lights glittering on as night falls. Tim is down there somewhere, one of those little light speckles. A million miles away. "Is there a way to communicate? With--" the living, he doesn't want to say. "With Tim. I tried to tell him, just before, but I'm not sure--"

The memory is on him like a beast, not just swallowing him but *devouring* him. Thank God it's Thursday, he'd thought, Dana's at aromatherapy class, she won't-- and there's another clatter, in the hall. Whoever it is, he's in the house. The gun fits perfectly into his hand, the *loaded* gun, and he's known for years that he could kill if it meant not losing one more person, one more person that he loves, and it only occurs to him in that moment, that damned computer voice buzzing incessantly in his ear, that he and Tim are more similar than he ever could've--

He shudders away from the inevitable shock and pain, the nightmare and the darkness reaching for him. He forces his eyes open, and it's still dark, but he manages to focus hs eyes on Stephanie, sitting cross-legged on an empty plot, picking at the blades of grass. She's a brilliant spot of color in the night: red tunic, green tights, yellow hair.

"So that's what that looks like..." she says, rubbing her thumb against her lip, then stands up. "You wanted to know about talking to--"

"Is that how you died?" Jack gestures at her costume. Christ. He should've shot Bruce Wayne when he had the goddamned chance. "Wayne's own son, then you-- and Tim went *back*? How could you-- How do you--"

"Oh," Stephanie says, and looks down at herself. The red shimmers to purple, yellow, white. A prom dress, an oversized T-shirt with a Superman logo. The damned Robin costume again, and then just a plain sweater and jeans. "We can't always choose." She gestures to Jack. He looks down at himself. He's not in the clothes he-- the last outfit he remembers putting on, and not his best suit, either. He's dressed for travel, the khaki pants and polo shirt that Janet always used to tease him about, saying he'd--

"Janet!" He crosses to Stephanie, tries to grasp her wrist, and fails somehow. It doesn't matter. "How do I-- where--"

Her eyes flicker white, mask-like, and then the mask forms around them like a pair of shiners. "We all get to where we're supposed to go," she says, looking away. "Eventually. Well, maybe not Jason, although that jackass doesn't seem to want to."

He won't be distracted now. "Janet, my wife. How do I find her?"

She lifts a gloved hand to silence him, the gauntlet shading from green to black as the moon passes behind a cloud.

"You can feel her, can't you?" Stephanie says. "Listen."

He closes his eyes, feels the dark pulling at him and opens them again, just as quickly. Closes them halfway, and... and it's not really something he can feel, more like something he can *hear*... like the rasp of a phonograph needle. The shadow of silence just before it slips into the groove and the aria begins.

He turns his head, trying to find the source of the sensation. He can almost smell her perfume, and he takes a step towards the cemetery gates...

It nearly kills him to look back. "What about you?"

"I'm staying." she says, hands folded over her wide belly. "I had a kid."

"Not... Tim's," Jack says blankly. Surely-- *surely* Tim would have told him *that*-- Stephanie stares at him, wide-eyed for a moment, and then just laughs, hands still clutching her pregnant belly.

"Ooh, ow. Why does everybody always think--? No. God, no." Stephanie braces herself and pushes herself to her feet. He offers her his arm, and she takes it, leaning on him as they walk towards the tall gates at the bottom of the hill. "Don't worry about me, Mr. Drake."

Jack's already drifting. He can almost hear Janet's voice now. He's missed her so much, and he never got to say goodbye to her, either. He takes a step down the path, then *off* the path and into the air, letting go of his connection to the path that he and Stephanie were on.

"I hope you find her." Stephanie calls.

Just before he's gone from Gotham entirely, with some sense that's not hearing or sight, Jack feels another presence shade into being next to her.

A similar shape, a similar *flair*. "Hi and goodbye, huh? Typical daddy Drake."

He doesn't look back.

And then he's gone.

*

_So put on those clothes you never grew into  
and smile like you mean it for once_

*

Stephanie watches him go, then picks up Jason's hand and lifts it off her hip, planting it safely above her utility belt instead. It's funny that Jack couldn't touch her, but Jason can. It might be a matter of motivation, or a matter of being on the same wavelength, or-- well, she hasn't been dead long enough to really theorize. But it seems to be new to Jason, too, or at least that might be *one* explanation as to why he can't seem to keep his hands off Steph's hot bod.

"Jerk," Jason adds as Jack Drake disappears.

"Hey, it's not like Tim even needs yet another guardian angel."

"Sure," Jason says, looking way too damn *not ridiculous* in those idiot spanky pants. "That explains why you pushed half a dozen bullets up into a wall, remember that? West side of the Zee Moores?"

Stephanie sticks her tongue out. Jason aims a cuff at her head, and she kicks him in the leg. She can't believe Batman never even gave him shin pads. "Yeah, funny that I only *had* to push half. You've been Tim's special helper longer than I've been on the rag, so--"

Jason yelps and claps his hands over his ears. "Jesus, nobody needs to hear that!"

"--so quit acting like I'm the only one who ever played *Touched By An Angel*!"

Jason doesn't have to say a word, just leers. Steph lifts a boot to kick him again. This time it's Spoiler's boot, and he waves her off. "Hey, who else was I gonna take under these pretty wings? You gotta haunt somebody, that's just how it works." He shakes his head, reaches up for the horizontal bar of a cross and swings himself up into a perch. "A guy can't do tea with Alfred for all eternity."

"Eventually we all probably will." Steph says, and Jason smirks. "Hey, don't think I'm not bitter that I didn't get to do that when I was, you know, alive!"

"Yeah, get in line, kick Bruce's ass when he dies." Jason slings an arm around her shoulder, sniffing her hair.

She doesn't feel like shoving him off, even when he hooks a hand in her belt. She takes his wrist, and hangs on. They've got a long way to drift, tonight. In space *and* time. It took some backtracking to get to this point, and Steph's not really sure why she even bothered.

It's time to go back home now, though. All the way down the river, to Bludhaven.

*

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Jason's in the kitchen, trying to rattle one of the mugs in the sink. It's not working too well. Funny how sometimes he and Steph can push a knife so it twists the wrong way, slow a fall so that Tim can be there in time... but can't pick up a fucking pencil or just touch someone's arm. Not even if they're asleep, not even to soothe away a nightmare.

Tim's in the bedroom. He's having a nightmare now. Something with ghosts in it, a big empty blackness coming at him and squiggly things coming out of people's eyes.

Jason narrows his own eyes against it, concentrating till his gauntlets appear and pushing hard at the clean dishes stacked neatly in the sink. How fucking humiliating would it be if he's the kind of ghost that can only haunt someone who sets out tea and cookies? Not that he minds the tea and cookies, it's just...

"It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness." Steph is out in the main room of the Bat-Rathole, or whatever it is Tim's gonna call his new place. She's concentrating hard, reading over Batgirl's shoulder. In the bedroom, the shadows reach for Tim. "It was the, uh."

"Sound it out..." Jason calls encouragingly.

"Fuck yourself," Steph sing-songs back. Not that she should feel bad, really, Jason thinks. Bitty-Batgirl herself is only up to 'best.' "It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness--"

"Best!" Cass bursts out. "It-was-the-best--"

In the bedroom, Tim hears her and stirs, tossing and turning under his cape. He should've taken a blanket, instead of leaving them all for Cass. Jason always woke up clammy, achy and hot when he slept under his cape, and his was only *double* weave kevlar. The darkness parts slightly, and there's a sense, somehow, that he's not quite as alone.

Cass' hearing is almost as sharp as Steph and Jason's awareness. She hears him shift and claps a hand over her mouth guiltily, freezing in place. Jason hops over next to her, one foot up on a stack of books, and whispers in her ear. "Everybody's wrong. You're kickass the way you are. You don't need to learn to read!"

Frowning, Cass leans back. She stares intently at the admittedly fascinating stains on the ceiling, the heavy book propped awkwardly between her knees. She looks a hell of a lot like Bruce when she does that. With the funny little line between her eyes and all... Jason feels his gauntlets form around his hands. They're heavy on his knuckles, rubbing against a bruise that had been bugging him for about two days before... Before.

"Shut up, bad angel." Steph mutters, then whispers in Cass' other ear. "It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..."

"How does it end?" Jason touches Cass' hand, then the book, trying to riffle the pages. Nothing.

"What, the book? How the hell would I know?" Steph stares.

Jason rubs his bare hands on his jean-clad thighs. "I don't know, maybe they made a movie."

Steph snorts. "Something like this: it was a happy ending, it was a sad ending, all the Robins were alive, all the Robins were--"

"If there's a movie about *Robins*, I want Judd Nelson to play me."

Steph smirks. "You are such a child of the eighties. Have you seen Judd Nelson lately?"

"Hey, have you seen *me* lately?" Jason shrugs one shoulder, feeling his appearance shift and change. Steph's eyes widen under her mask, and she hastily looks down. Cass' eyelashes are fluttering slowly, and she pushes her book aside, slumping down and curling into a little ball in a single motion.

"It's okay to think about me," Steph whispers in her ear. "Or not, I mean..." But Cass doesn't hear, not even a bit. Jason knows how it goes. Poor Bitty Bat's hurting right now. She can't talk about Steph, can't even think about her. *Definitely* can't hear her.

Jason sure doesn't know anyone like *that*.

In the bedroom, Tim's dreaming again. Underwater, slow and clogging everything, cold and pulling him down... Jason looks over at Steph. She feels it too. He reaches out to take her hand.

They won't be able to do much. Jason never could, but maybe it'll be different with Steph. He doesn't have a lot of hope, but... he has some. Just a little.

They go into the bedroom together.

*

_If you come back bring a new name for everything_

*

end


End file.
